Youth had overtaken it once more, and filled it with the desire of
independence. Chained to the Russian Empire, it was reaching out toward
all that could give it the strength to persist and endure, toward all
that could give it knowledge of its proper soul. And so Sibelius, in the
search for the expression of his own personality, so much at one with
that of his fellows, was traveling in the common way. The word that he
was seeking, the word that should bring fulfilment to his proper soul,
was deeply needed by his fellows. Inarticulate thousands, unaware though
they were of his existence, awaited his work, wanted the sustenance it
could give. And, certainly, the sense of the needfulness of his work,
the sense of the large value set upon his best and purest attainments by
life itself, must have been with Sibelius always, must have supplied him
with a powerful incentive and made enormously for his achievements. He
must have felt all the surge of the race driving him. He must have had
continually the marvelous stimulus of feeling about him, for all the
night and the cold, the forms of comrades straining toward a single
lofty goal, felt himself one of an army of marching men. This folk, far
in its past, had imagined the figure of a hero-poet, Vainemunden, and
placed in his hands an instrument "shaped out of very sorrow," and
attributed magical power to his song.
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